Jay L. Wile's Blog, page 20

No, These Researchers Did Not See a Single-Celled Organism Evolve Into A Multicellular Organism!

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A green algae in a predator-free environment (far left) and other environments with predators. (click for credit)

A student sent me an article from Science Alert, asking me about its rather bold claim:

Scientists Have Witnessed a Single-Celled Algae Evolve Into a Multicellular Organism…Most of us know that at some point in our evolutionary history around 600 million years ago, single-celled organisms evolved into more complex multicellular life. But knowing that happened and actually seeing it happen in real-time in front of you is an entirely different matter altogether. And that’s exactly what researchers from the George Institute of Technology and University of Montana have witnessed – and captured in the breathtaking, time-lapse footage below.

Over the course of my scientific career, I have learned that many science journalists are terrible at science and not much better at journalism, so I did what I always do when I read about science in the popular press: I found the scientific article upon which it was based. Not surprisingly, the study didn’t do what the article claims. It did find one interesting result, however.

The study examined the behavior of a green algae in the species charmingly named Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. In the wild, these algae exist as individual, single-celled organisms. In the lab, the researchers exposed some of them to a natural predator (Paramecium tetraurelia) and found that the algae would come together and form colonies, since that made them less likely to be eaten by the predator. In other words, several individual single-celled organisms would “team up” to gain protection from the predator.

This is not surprising, and it is not a new result. Indeed, other researchers noted this behavior four years ago. Interestingly enough, they found that the algae didn’t even need to be in the same species to “team up.” They also saw that when the predator was removed, the algae went back to their single-celled form. Technically, this is called facultative multicellularity, and it is seen in many single-celled organisms. They prefer to live life as individuals, but when they have to, they come together to help one another out.

Here is where the new study is different. When they removed the predator, the cells stayed together. They even reproduced together. Indeed, the researchers report that even though the predator was removed four years ago, the cells have stayed in groups and reproduced in groups. As a result, they say they have produced an obligate multicellular form of the organism: one that stays together even when it could split into individual cells again.

I am skeptical that this is the case. Most likely, there is no selective advantage to these algae reverting back to their single-celled form in this artificial environment, so it doesn’t happen. Instead, the algae continue to behave the way they were behaving when the predator was present. I would suspect that if these organisms were put in the wild (or even a more freely-changing artificial environment), they would revert back to single-celled organisms when that produced an advantage over the group form.

However, let’s give the researchers the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say that even in the wild, this group of algae stays a group and is therefore truly an obligate multicellular form of the algae. Does this tell us anything about the origin of multicellularity? No. All it shows is that single-celled organisms which already tend to clump together in groups when the need arises will sometimes stay in groups, even when the initial reason for the formation of the group is gone. While this is interesting, it tells us nothing about how multicellular life might have formed. It might tell us how colonies of single-celled organisms (which exist in abundance today) formed, but that is all.

Multicellular organisms are not just colonies of single-celled organisms. Multicellular organisms have cells that split the tasks of the organism and communicate with one another to make sure all the tasks are being performed and being performed properly. That is a lot different from a colony of single-celled life forms that all do the same thing but just group together because there is strength in numbers.

If evolution in the flagellate-to-philosopher sense is true, there must have been a transition between single-celled organisms (or colonies of single-celled organisms) and multicellular organisms. It would require the evolution of cellular specialization, sophisticated cellular communication, and many other genetic innovations, none of which are needed to explain the results of this study. Thus, while this study is interesting in the sense that it might have produced a stable colonial version of a single-celled organism, it tells us nothing about how multicellular organisms formed.

Homeschoolers: Hear From The Only Person Alive Today Who Lived With C.S. Lewis

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Douglas Gresham, the stepson of C.S. Lewis, will speak at two of the Great Homeschool Conventions this year.

It is 4 o’clock in the morning, and I just got off the phone with Douglas Gresham, the stepson of C.S Lewis. Dr. Lewis adopted both Douglas and his older brother, David, when he married their mother, Joy. When Joy lost her battle with cancer, Lewis continued to raise them. As someone who has read every one of Dr. Lewis’s works, I was thrilled to have the chance to speak with his stepson. However, I had to call him at 3:00 AM my time, because he lives in Malta and was only free in the morning. I originally thought I would go back to sleep and write about the interview later, but I simply cannot. My conversation with him was so spiritually and intellectually stimulating that I am simply to excited to go back to sleep.

Why did I call Mr. Gresham? He is one of the featured speakers at the Great Homeschool Conventions in Texas and Ohio, and I was asked to interview him regarding what he plans to share with the attendees. Seems a simple enough task, right? Not when you are talking to someone like Douglas Gresham. For example, I asked him what he plans to speak about, and here is what he said:

I never prepare my lectures. I just pray lots and ask the Holy Spirit to guide me…I am not 100% sure what I am going to talk about, but I am sure it will be what the Lord wants me say.

That’s the kind of man Mr. Gresham seems to be: A man who takes the guidance of the Holy Spirit very seriously.

For example, he told me about how he felt the Lord calling him to stop farming (something he had been doing off and on in his adult life) and start a Christian psychotherapy and hospitality ministry. Essentially, he and his wife, Merrie, purchased an estate and converted it into a place where people who needed help could stay. They accepted anyone who had nowhere else to go, and they didn’t charge them anything. While he was being trained by Dr. Philip Ney to start the ministry, he met a young woman who was pregnant and very worried about raising a baby. While they were talking, she admired a ring that he was wearing. Without even thinking, he took the ring off his finger, gave it to her, and told her that it was for her daughter. He did not know the gender of the child, but he simply felt the Holy Spirit telling him to do that. Well, the woman did have a daughter. She is now a wonderful young woman who wears that ring every day.

Since Mr. Gresham doesn’t know exactly what he will say at the convention, I simply asked him about his thoughts on homeschooling. Like me, he is a “convert” to idea. He didn’t homeschool his own children, because he didn’t know about it at the time. However, later in his life, he started sailing along the east coast of Australia. He said that in each port he stopped, he met children who were bright, inquisitive, and more importantly, they were eager to carry on conversations with him. He thought that those children were rather different from the typical Australian children he was used to meeting, and he became curious as to why. He eventually found out that it was because they were homeschooled.

It turns out that some families in Australia spend a great deal of their time sailing, and because they are away so much, they homeschool their children. Since Mr. Gresham was visiting the ports of Australia, he encountered a lot of these homeschooled – or perhaps I should say boatschooled – children, and they continued to impress him. This prompted him to do some serious research about the state of education today, and as a result, he is now a staunch advocate of home education. As he said to me:

Homeschooling, by at least slightly educated parents, is utterly vital. We have gotten to the stage now where government-provided education is roughly equivalent to what you get in a bull ring with three bulls running around. It has been shown that 75% of what children learn in school comes from their peers. It makes no sense to learn from people who don’t know any more than you do.

In addition, he referenced his stepfather’s book, The Abolition of Man, which demonstrates that rejecting the existence of objective moral truths will eventually lead to the collapse of society. According to Mr. Gresham, some of what is in that book is already being played out because of the education provided by government schools. He believes that homeschooling serves as an effective bulwark against the societal decay envisioned by Dr. Lewis.

Speaking of Dr. Lewis, the main reason Mr. Gresham was invited to the Great Homeschool Conventions is because he has an intimate knowledge of the brilliant man he calls “Jack.” Long ago, I learned that Dr. Lewis’s friends and family called him by that name, but I had never learned why. Mr. Gresham said that as a very young boy, Dr. Lewis had become fond of a dog named “Jacksie.” When the dog was killed in an accident, Lewis declared that his name was Jacksie, so his friends and family started calling him that. Eventually, the nickname was shortened to “Jack.” Mr. Gresham also said that he thinks his stepfather looks like someone you would call “Jack.”

I asked him what it was like to live with a man like Dr. Lewis, and he said that’s a difficult question to answer. He then said:

I did have a wonderful stepfather. There is no doubt about that.

However, he noted that his mother was a towering intellect as well. He said that when his mother and Dr. Lewis played Scrabble, they would use two sets of tiles, and they would allow any word in any language, even if the language was fictional. The word just had to be found in a book. He said it wasn’t unusual to see them fill almost the entire board with tiles, and despite the fact that nearly every square had a letter on it, all connecting tiles spelling out words that could be found in a book! As he said after sharing that anecdote:

I had the privilege of living with people, the likes of which probably won’t be seen again for quite some time.

I cannot agree more. In fact, that brings me to one very important aspect of his appearance at the Great Homeschool Conventions. Mr. Gresham is the last surviving person to have lived with one of the most important men of the 20th Century. If you want an intimate look at Clive Staples Lewis (“Jack”), he is the only person who can give it to you. And, as he pointed out:

I am 73 years old, so you don’t have long if you want to hear from me!

A New Category

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Me and a homeschool graduate who studied chemistry at university.

I really enjoyed preparing for and writing my previous post about homeschool graduate Dr. Nathan T. Brewer. If the statistics are correct, it was one of my most-read posts this year. As a result, I decided I would try to do some more writing about homeschool graduates and what they are doing these days. I have already scheduled an interview with a student who is currently in one of my university courses, and I am collecting contact information for other homeschool graduates. I hope to find out what they are doing, whether or not their faith plays a role in what they are doing, and what their honest opinions are about how homeschool prepared them for life beyond high school. While my natural inclination is to interview homeschool graduates who went on to some form of higher education, I hope to interview many homeschool graduates who participate in a wide range of careers.

While thinking about this new project, I realized that I have already written about homeschool graduates several times, so I decided to add a new category:

Homeschool Graduates

While the articles mostly focus on studies that have been performed on homeschool graduates, there are also some articles about individuals. Enjoy!

Dr. Nathan T. Brewer: Homeschool Graduate and Nuclear Physicist

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Dr. Nathan T. Brewer

When I was on the faculty at Ball State University (in the early 1990s), I started encountering a unique group of students: homeschool graduates. I knew nothing about homeschooling, but I was impressed by what I saw. Not only were homeschool graduates excellent university students, but they were also at university for more than just the chance to get a degree and get a good job. They were there because they recognized that God had given them specific gifts, and to honor Him, they needed to develop those gifts and use them to make the world better for other people. My experience with them inspired me to start working with homeschooling parents, and eventually, I began writing homeschooling curriculum.

Since that time, I have been constantly impressed with the homeschooled students and homeschool graduates I have encountered. They are still my best university students, and I expect that they will do great things. Yesterday, I had a chance to chat with one who is, indeed, doing great things: Dr. Nathan T. Brewer. He is currently doing postdoctoral research for the University of Tennessee and is employed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is part of a team that is trying to understand the structure of the atomic nucleus by synthesizing new elements.

His proud mother informed me about his work via Facebook, so I contacted him, and he sent me a copy of the paper that he thinks contains his most important scientific work so far. In that paper, he describes experiments that he and an international team of scientists performed to show an alternate method of producing the heaviest-known element, which is named Oganesson in honor of Russian nuclear physicist Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian. He thinks that this method shows the most promise for synthesizing even heavier elements, and it also helps us further understand how these exotic nuclear reactions happen. While all of this might sound unfamiliar to you, it is very important work in the field of nuclear physics, and I am impressed that someone so young has been a successful part of it.

While I am fascinated by the science he is doing, I thought my readers would be interested in the fact that he was homeschooled from grades 6 through grades 12, so he graciously agreed to take time out of his busy day to speak with me about topics that are of interest to homeschooling parents.

I wanted to know how Dr. Brewer went from homeschooling to a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, and he told me that from a very early age he really enjoyed the process of learning, so going to university after high school was the obvious choice. At one time, he thought about being a professional musician, but he decided to turn to physics, because he thought it would be a more stable career. He actually said:

I thought physics would be better than standing on the corner begging for money, but little did I know about grants.

If you have ever written a grant to support your research, you know what he means!

Dr. Brewer got his undergraduate degree in physics from Union University and his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Vanderbilt University. Of course, I had to ask him whether being homeschooled had helped him or hindered him in his university work, and overall, he thought it helped him. For example, he thought that homeschooling taught him how to be self-motivated, which is absolutely essential if a person really wants to succeed at the university and postgraduate levels. In addition, he thought that the freedom that comes with homeschooling was important, because he could spend more time on the subjects that really interested him. That’s one reason he ended up enjoying physics so much – he was able to spend a lot of time studying it. He told me:

The thing about studying science is that you have to be really good with everything. You have to be good at writing, you have to be good at technology, you have to be good at learning…There needs to be an optimism that you can get everything you want out of your education, and homeschooling is a great way to get that optimism.

There was one way that Dr. Brewer thought homeschooling hindered his success a bit: He was unprepared for the workload at university. He had to adjust to it. I have seen that in some of the homeschool graduates who have been in my university courses. Homeschooling parents know their children so well that they can usually tell when the child “gets it” and when the child doesn’t. As a result, when the parent sees that the child understands the topic, the parent can just move on. At university, of course, the professors don’t know their students very well, so the students must demonstrate that they have mastered the material. This leads to some homeschooled students being unprepared for the amount of work they have to do. Obviously, since my best students are the homeschool graduates, they usually adjust, but it can take some time.

Dr. Brewer is a Christian, so of course we had to talk about how he sees his faith interacting with his science. For such a young scientist, I thought he put it in a superb way:

My Christianity gives me a desire to learn. The world is absolutely breathtaking, and studying the world’s beauty fuels my faith.

He also mentioned one other way that his faith and his science interact, and it is something I had never considered:

My practice of faith has graciously given me patience. That patience has paid off in my science.

In today’s world of instant gratification, patience is a rare commodity, but it is absolutely essential in science. For Dr. Brewer, his faith was an integral part of finding out how to be patient.

I want to end with what Dr. Brewer thinks is the most important message that he can give to homeschooled students. I think it applies to all students, but because of the nature of homeschooling, I think that homeschooled students can probably benefit from his advice more than other students. When thinking about what you plan to do after school:

Think carefully about the end game. Think about what the career you are thinking about looks like. Find a mentor to help you get a realistic idea of the career.

Dr. Brewer mentioned the importance of finding a mentor several times, and I strongly agree with him. There is no way for a high school or first-year university student to really know what a career is like. If you think you want to be a physicist (or chemist – I had to throw that in) find a physicist (or chemist) who will help you discover what the career is like. The more personal interaction you have with a mentor from the field in which you are interested, the better you can determine if that field is what God is calling you to do. With the freedom that homeschooling gives, I think homeschooled students can spend more time interacting with a mentor than most other students, so you should definitely try to take this advice to heart.

While Dr. Brewer spends most of his time discovering new things in nuclear physics, he does have a blog that he updates from time to time.

Why I Am Glad That I Homeschooled

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My favorite picture of me and my little girl. It was taken in Capetown, South Africa in 2004, when we were on a homeschooling speaking tour.

My little girl turns 40 this month. I am not sure how to take that. In my mind, she is still that 16-year-old girl who loved Dan Marino, computer games, and ice cream cake. Where in the world did the time go? As I think about all the wonderful (and not-so-wonderful) times we have experienced together, I see a lot of mistakes that I made in parenting her. There are definitely things I would do differently if I could turn back the clock to the day we adopted her. However, the one thing I know I would not change is our decision to homeschool her.

We started homeschooling her as soon as we could, and the reason was simple: she was the classic example of a student who “fell through the cracks.” When she was having a good day, she learned well. When she wasn’t having a good day, she didn’t. As a result, there were large, gaping holes in her education. Not surprisingly, then, when she took the PSAT test, she scored in the bottom 35% of the nation in math and the top 25% of the nation in English. She wanted to get a college degree, because as far as she knew, no one in her biological heritage had one. Getting a degree would provide a tangible break from her past. However, with those scores, she would have a difficult time getting accepted to college, much less succeeding when she got there.

As a result, we spent most of her homeschooling in “educational triage.” We identified the holes in her education and then filled them. When she took the ACT (one of the standardized tests used for college entrance) early in her senior year, she scored in the top 5% in English and the top 30% in math. As a scientist, I decided that the numbers were the ultimate evidence that the decision to homeschool her was a good one. She ended up being accepted at Butler University and graduating with a degree in sociology (which, of course, she doesn’t use).

In my mind, then, homeschooling was all about academics. Our daughter wanted a college degree, and the only way we could prepare her for college was to homeschool her. Even after she had graduated college, I still thought that homeschooling her was all about academics. However, as time went on, my view of the matter began to change. As I celebrated the successes in her adult life and helped her deal with the failures, I started to notice that our relationship was very different from the relationships that most of my friends had with their adult children. Our daughter actually wants to spend time – lots of time – with us. For example, right now, as she is about to turn 40, she is on a mother-daughter vacation. When my wife suggested the idea to her, she was thrilled. At Christmas, I gave her a little picture book that had old and new photos of me, her, and my wife. When she opened it, her husband said, “Look at how her face just lit up.”

Why do I have a daughter who loves to spend time with me and her mother? If you ask her, it’s because we spent so much time together when she was young. In these days when children are separated from their parents by school, after-school activities, and other distractions, it’s hard to form a deep family bond. When you homeschool, you are not only using the best possible educational model to teach your child, but you are also doing something very few families do: you are spending a lot of time together. In the long run, that makes a huge difference!

Does that mean everyone who homeschools will have a great relationship with their adult children? Of course not! There are many, many factors that play into how people bond with one another. However, probably the most crucial of those factors is time that you spend together. The more time you spend with your children, the better you get to know them. Looking back on my homeschooling my little girl, I recognize that she got an incredible education. More importantly, however, we all got an amazing gift: lots of time to enjoy one another and grow closer together. Of all the wonderful things I can say about homeschooling, that is the most important.

A Cure For Cancer? Probably Not!

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Cancer cells from human connective tissue (click for credit)

I started seeing it on my Facebook feed Tuesday. I started getting messages about it on Wednesday. It’s a news story of great interest to many people, and the headline says it all:

A CURE FOR CANCER? ISRAELI SCIENTISTS SAY THEY THINK THEY FOUND ONE

The news outlet that published the story is the Jerusalem Post. After it was published there on Monday, U.S. news outlets picked up the story. I suspect that nearly everyone in the U.S. knows someone who has been afflicted with some form of cancer, so the interest is understandable. The problem is that the story is almost certainly not true.

As far as I know, the Jerusalem Post is a credible news organization. Also, the people who have made the claim (Dan D. Aridor and Dr. Ilan Morad ) are credible people. Nevertheless, the claims are not credible, especially when you investigate them.

Aridor and Morad say that they are using “phage display” technologies to target proteins that are typically produced by cancer cells. This allows them to eliminate cancer cells without affecting healthy ones. This is already an active area of cancer treatment research, so the technique is a valid one. They claim that they have a special variation on the technique that will allow them to offer “a complete cure for cancer” within a year or so. If that sounds too good to be true, it probably is – especially when you see what the claim is based on.

Essentially, they say they have tested their technique on mice, and it works very well. Unfortunately, they have not published their results, so it is hard to know what that really means. They claim they don’t want to spend their time and money on writing up a publication. Instead, they want to concentrate on the research necessary to perfect the technique. That is understandable, and they might also be afraid that others could use their publication to “copy” their technique and beat them to the punch.

So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume that they tested their technique on mice, and it was found to completely eliminate specific types of cancer in mice with no discernible side effects. That still doesn’t mean it will work in people! The gap between animal studies and human studies is huge, which is why many treatments that worked incredibly well in animals do very poorly when used to treat people. Now, of course, it makes sense to test a treatment on animals first, but to claim that a technique can go from early animal trials to human treatment in a year is naive, at best.

Also, to make a blanket statement that it will be “a complete cure for cancer” is silly, since there are so many different forms of cancer. It’s possible that their technique might be a great cure for some forms of cancer, but the idea that it will treat all (or even most) forms of cancer seems shockingly inconsistent with what we know about the nature of cancer itself.

Of course, no one will be happier than me if I am wrong. I have had skin cancer removed, and my wife recently had a cancerous breast tumor removed. Thus, a cure for cancer would clearly make me very happy. Nevertheless, I don’t think there will be one within a year, and even if there is one, I suspect that it will only be able to treat specific types of cancer.

These Climate Scientists Predict Global Cooling

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Global Temperatures past, present, and future, according to three climate scientists. (Figure 3 from the study being discussed)

The majority of climate scientists think that global temperatures have risen over the past century mostly because of human activity. However, there are some climate scientists who think that the small changes we have seen in global temperature are mostly the result of natural variations that exist independently of people. Others simply say we don’t have enough information to know how much human activity has played a role in the process. Add to that the unreliability of much of the early data regarding global temperatures, and you end up with a picture that is far more murky than what most media outlets and politicians want you to see.

A recently-published study might help to eventually shed some light on how much human activity affects global temperatures. It comes from four climate scientists in China who are affiliated with The Climate Center of the Zhejiang Meteorologic Bureau, the Earth Science School of Zhejiang University, and the Shanghai Climate Center. They are convinced that the vast majority of the changes we have seen in global temperatures are due to natural variations, and those variations are buffered by the oceans. As a result, they have tried to analyze global temperatures from that perspective.

Since global temperature data sets don’t really agree with one another, they first had to choose which global temperatures they would actually use. They chose the Global Land Surface Temperature Anomaly Index (GLST) as compiled by the NOAA. They then tried to find correlations between those data and the Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) as compiled by the Hadley Climate Center. The correlations they found led them to develop a mathematical equation that would reproduce the GLST data. While the idea of finding a single equation that would fit all the GLST data might seem like an impossible task, it is not. One phrase I often hear from my nuclear chemistry colleagues is, “It only takes four parameters to fit an elephant.” In other words, if you have enough parameters in your equation, you can fit just about anything.

Of course, for something as complex as global temperatures, it takes more than four parameters. In fact, their paper indicates that it took 20. However, with their 20-parameter equation, they were able to reasonably reproduce the global temperature data that they were analyzing. The results can be seen in the image at the top of the post. The jagged, grey line indicates the data, and the smoother, black line indicates the results of their equation. As you can see, it does a pretty good job of fitting the known data.

Does that mean their equation is a good explanation of global temperatures? Not at all. It is simply an equation that has been forced to fit the data. What I find interesting, however, are the temperatures it predicts for the future. According to the equation, the earth has hit its maximum temperature for a while, and over the next 100+ years, the average temperature of the planet will cool. Do I think that prediction is correct? There is no way I can adequately judge that. There are simply too many unknowns in climate science for anyone to make a reliable prediction about what is going to happen in the future. Perhaps we will eventually learn enough about climate science to change that, but right now, the uncertainties simply preclude reasonable predictions.

However, here’s what I will say about this very interesting study: The authors assume that that the vast majority of the temperature variations we have seen are the result of natural processes. If, over the next 30 years, the data continue to fall in line with the predictions of their equation, that will lend more credence to their assumption. If not, that will indicate that either their assumption is wrong, or that some of the natural variations which cause global temperature changes are too long-term to show up in a century’s worth of unreliable temperature data.

Regardless of the outcome, I do think that this paper, while simple in its approach, is a valuable addition to climate science.

Big News in Epigenetics!

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The Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park holds bacteria like the ones in the study being discussed.

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The more we learn about creation, the more it surprises us. While it is true in all areas of science, it seems particularly true in genetics. When I was at university, I was taught as definitive fact that each gene in my DNA determined the makeup of one protein in my body. We now know that is false. I was also taught as definitive fact that the only way a parent can transmit a trait to its offspring is through the sequence of nucleotide bases in DNA. As a result, if a new trait appears in a population, it must be due to a change in the species’ DNA sequence. We now know that is false. For example, I was taught as definitive fact in university that cave fish are blind because of mutations to their DNA. We now know that is false, at least for one species of blind cave fish.

So we now know that there are ways to inherit traits that go beyond the DNA sequence that you inherit from both parents. For example, we know that if you train mice to fear a certain smell, the next generation can inherit that fear. It’s not that the parents train the fear into their offspring (the offspring were raised separate from their trained parent). They actually inherited the fear. How in the world can a parent pass on a fear of something to its offspring? That’s what the field of epigenetics (which literally means “on top of genetics”) wants to find out.

We know that it has something to do with how an organism regulates the activity of its genes. An organism can alter chemical aspects of the DNA that are not related to its actual sequence, and that alteration can decrease the use of a gene, increase the use of a gene, turn a gene off so that it is not used at all, or turn a gene on so that it will start being used. For example, most people are not born lactose intolerant. After all, they drink their mother’s milk or a milk-based formula. Milk digestion requires the enzyme called “lactase,” which is coded for by a gene. While everyone has that gene turned on at birth, in some people, it gets turned off later on, causing lactose intolerance. Nothing has changed in the person’s DNA sequence – the gene is still there and has not been broken. However, that gene has been turned off by epigenetic mechanisms. It is thought that this process is responsible for epigenetic inheritance. To some extent, we must be able to inherit the “off” and “on” status of our parents’ genes.

Now it has always been thought that epigenetic mechanisms happen only in “highly-evolved” organisms. After all, “primitive” organisms are not thought to have complex DNA mechanisms, because those mechanisms never evolved in such organisms. That’s where the big news comes in. A team of researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln recently published a paper in which they demonstrate that a “primitive” bacterium (Sulfolobus solfataricus) has epigenetic mechanisms!

This bacterium lives in the hot, sulfur-rich waters of places like the Grand Prismatic Spring shown above. Such bacteria are assumed to be among the first living cells that evolved, so they are thought to represent life at its most primitive. The researchers decided to start exposing the bacteria to higher levels of acid, trying to see if the bacteria could increase their acid resistance. They found that over time, the bacteria could increase acid resistance by almost 200x what they have in the wild. Some of them did it by altering the sequence of their DNA through mutations, but one group of bacteria increased their acid resistance without changing their DNA sequence at all. Thus, they became acid resistant through epigenetic means, not through mutation!

Dr. Paul Blum, one of the scientists involved in the research, put it this way:

The surprise is that it’s in these relatively primitive organisms, which we know to be ancient…We’ve been thinking about this as something (evolutionarily) new. But epigenetics is not a newcomer to the planet.

Of course it’s not new to the planet. Complex mechanisms don’t evolve. They are designed. Anything as complex as epigenetics must be a part of the original design of creation. Thus, it’s not surprising to find it in even the “simplest” life forms on the planet.

This discovery emphasizes something that I tell my students over and over again in my biology book: There is no such thing as a simple life form. Even at its most basic level, life is mind-bogglingly complex!

Another Reason to Doubt the Global Climate Models

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The study discussed in this article was performed in Puerto Rico’s El Yunque National Forest.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that I am very skeptical of climate models that predict the consequences of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Initially, this was due to my own experience with large-scale computer models. In my early scientific research, I both wrote and used them, so I know how much their results are affected by the assumptions programmed into them. As time has gone on, my skepticism has increased, since it has been demonstrated over and over again that the climate models do not line up with the most relevant data.

Why do the climate models compare so poorly to the appropriate data? Mostly because they contain many assumptions that have not been tested. Typically, these assumptions neglect the idea that the earth has negative feedback mechanisms, which are the hallmark of nearly every well-designed system. As time has gone on, many such negative feedback mechanisms have been found, and they typically run counter to the assumptions programmed into the climate models (see here, here, and here, for example). It seems that a graduate student from the University of Virginia (Stephanie Roe) has found yet another of earth’s negative feedback mechanisms.

There is a lot of dead, decaying matter on the floors of the tropical forests of the world. As that dead matter decomposes, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Well, decomposition is driven by chemical reactions, and chemical reactions speed up with increasing temperature. So, as the world warms, what should happen to the rate of carbon dioxide produced by decomposition? It should increase, right? That will release more carbon dioxide into the air, which will accelerate warming. This is an example of a positive feedback mechanism. In such a mechanism, a change promotes a process that amplifies the change. This particular positive feedback mechanism is programmed into the climate models that are being used to predict the consequences of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

While that assumption makes perfect sense, the real world often works differently from our simple assumptions. That’s one reason Stephanie Roe decided to test it. She went to Puerto Rico’s El Yunque National Forest, where the US Forest Service set up infrared heaters in different parts of the forest. Those heaters were programmed to keep their surroundings 4 degrees Celsius warmer than the rest of the forest. Those parts of the forest, then, should behave like the tropical forests will behave if the earth warms by an average of 4 degrees. In addition, there were parts of the forest where identical, non-working heaters were placed. They served as control areas – they stayed at the normal temperature of the forest, but they had the physical structures of the heaters present. Roe introduced various kinds of dead matter (both native and non-native) to the forest in both the warmed sections and the control sections. She then collected samples later to test the rate of decomposition in each.

What did she find? She found that the result was precisely opposite of what is programmed into the climate models. The warmed areas of the forests had slower rates of decomposition than the control areas. Why? According to her research, it is because the warmer parts of the forest were drier. The process of decomposition is accelerated strongly by moisture, so the loss of moisture slowed down the decomposition more than the higher temperature sped it up. Thus, according to her research, increased temperatures should reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by decomposition. This, of course, is an example of a negative feedback mechanism: a change promotes a process that decreases the rate of change. Once again, such mechanisms are the hallmark of designed systems, so it is not surprising that it exists here on earth.

The more we learn about climate, the less confidence I have in the predictions of the climate change doomsayers.

What a Way to Bring in the New Year!

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An aerial view of the Large Hadron Collider’s layout. The particle accelerator is used for high-energy physics experiments. (click for credit)

I wasn’t planning on writing a post today, but as I was going through my email, I saw a wonderful message from a homeschool graduated who used my curriculum, and I just had to post about it. I am keeping the person’s name and some of the professional details confidential (using square brackets to paraphrase and ellipses to cut), because I don’t want the person’s presence on a creationist blog to be harmful to his or her career. It’s sad that I have to do that, but many of the high priests of science are the most anti-science people on the planet, excommunicating those who do not accept their dogma.

Here is the wonderful message I received:

I am writing to thank you for your excellent high school science courses. As a homeschooler, I really appreciated the readability of the texts. The challenging material helped me to develop effective study habits, while your clear enthusiasm for each subject led me to develop a lasting interest in the sciences, especially physics. In fact, after working through Module 8 (“Gravity and Relativity”) of your Advanced Physics Course, I decided to pursue a career in physics. Though I didn’t really have any idea of what that would entail, I figured that your science courses would be an ideal preparation, and indeed they were! Largely due to to the strong foundation that your courses (Physical Science, Biology, The Human Body, Chemistry, Advanced Chemistry, Physics, and Advanced Physics) had provided me throughout middle school and high school, I was able to complete my BS in physics a year early. This helped me to be successful in the treacherous grad school application process, and I am now a [graduate student at a well-known university] pursuing a PhD in experimental particle physics; I’m [doing original research at facilities like the one pictured above]; these are goals that I have looked forward to for a long time. Your courses have been key in successfully beginning to achieve these goals…so thank you for helping to make all of this possible!

As one further note, I’d also like to add that I really appreciate how your texts touched on more advanced topics, even if only to ultimately concede that they were “beyond the scope of this course.” Though I found it a bit frustrating at the time, it really motivated me to keep pushing deeper into the subject, making it all the more satisfying to finally encounter the topic in a later class. For example, your brief description of solving the Schrodinger equation for hydrogen (page 50 of your Advanced Chemistry text) had me on the edge of my seat until finally reaching this problem in undergrad Quantum II. Currently, my Quantum Field Theory textbook tends to make the same sort of statements…and it reminds me of your superlative texts (though when I come across statements like these in QFT, it tends to make me relieved rather than frustrated – I’m happy to leave that particular calculation to the theorists!).

Anyway, I’m sure you get many messages like this, but I just really wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your texts and how much they have aided me in the career path that they inspired me to pursue…

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

There are so many wonderful things to say about this student’s message to me, but I will limit myself to two:

1) I love the fact that this person was “on the edge of” his or her seat because of a solution to the Schrodinger equation!

2) This once again demonstrates that Bill Nye has no idea what he is talking about when he claims that creationist materials are a detriment to science. This student learned junior-high and high-school science from creationist materials, and those materials inspired him or her to be doing the kind of original scientific research that Nye can only dream about doing.